Dispensing mercy

AN AILING Boodram Bedassie, who was convicted for murder 28 years ago, will soon be a free man, thanks to a decision of the Mercy Committee taken at Monday’s meeting. We would prefer not to quarrel with such a decision since, we understand, it was based not only on the length of time the 65-year-old Bedassie has spent in prison but, more pertinently, on the fact that he is bed-ridden and seriously ill. His attorney Gerald Ramdeen, who rushed to the Port-of-Spain State Prison on Tuesday to give him the good news, told Newsday that his client was “virtually on his death bed.” Stricken with tuberculosis and heart problems, Bedassie could not get up from the infirmary bed, he looked weak and had lost a lot of weight, said Ramdeen.    

Bedassie was one of the Death Row prisoners whose sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1994 as a result of the Privy Council’s Pratt and Morgan ruling. One may question why the Mercy Committee waited until his health had deteriorated to such a point before recommending an unconditional pardon, having regard to the length of time Bedassie has lived behind bars. Still, it must be a relief to know that at least he would be spending his last days as a free man. While we would not quibble with the freeing of Bedassie, we must,    nevertheless, wonder about the Committee’s method of selection and the criteria it uses to recommend pardons. Since October last year, we had urged that Felix James, the country’s longest serving prisoner, be considered for release but sadly our appeal has apparently fallen on  deaf ears. James was convicted for murder 29 years ago when he was 17 years old and, together with the four years he had spent in jail awaiting trial, he has been living behind bars now for a record total of 33 years.

The peculiar thing about James’ incarceration is that he was sentenced by the Court to be kept in prison “at the President’s pleasure.” Now we must ask, precisely what does that mean in legal terms? Surely it cannot mean life imprisonment. But when does the “President’s pleasure” end? In other words, who, in these circumstances, looks at or reviews James’ imprisonment and decides that the time has come for him to be released? If there is no such monitoring, as appears to be the case, then it is obvious that he would simply be forgotten in jail and left to rot in a prison cell. In our view, James does not deserve such a fate. He was not a cold-blooded killer. As a teenager, he stabbed his girlfriend in a fit of rage and, after being tried for murder, he was found guilty but insane. And that was 28 years ago. By comparison to present-day matters, we feel sure that James’ rash act of violence would now be considered no more than a case of manslaughter, incurring a relatively short term of imprisonment.

But even so, James has proven to be a model prisoner for all those years, as the prison authorities have testified. He was actually commended for bravery in 1991 when he went to the rescue of a prison officer who was viciously attacked by one of the inmates at Carrera. He held the assailant and handed him over to the authorities. In addition, James’ good conduct has resulted in his appointment as an assistant orderly, helping to supervise other prisoners. Finally, James has expressed his “remorse and regret” that his actions resulted in the death of another human being. “I do not want to die in prison” he says, “but I feel as though I have been either lost in the prison system or forgotten.” It is not time for the Mercy Committee to look with mercy upon the longest serving prisoner in our jails?